Th e article considers the functioning of historical and mythological anthroponyms in the Russian tragedy of the middle of the 18th century — the beginning of the 19th century. Th e major focus is made on the semantic transformation of proper names in the poetic text, where two main trends can be seen. Th e fi rst one consists in attenuation of referential links of anthroponyms with historical/mythological spheres, whereas the other one is the concretization of their historical credibility. Th e complex interaction of these two trends contributes to the polysemantism of the artistic world of the tragedy, and at the same time fi lls the plays with the topical political meaning.